Friends of Nigeria Newsletter Selections, Winter 2006

Property worth about £20,000 were destroyed over the week-end when the Warri main market was razed to the ground by fire.

As the big blaze was on, wailing women and children filled the surrounding streets while American Peace Corps volunteers working in Warri joined a contingent of 150 policemen in a five hour battle to bring it under control.

The police contingent was led by Chief Superintendnet of Police in-charge of Delta Province, Mr. J.O. Obi.
According to an eye-witness account, the fire started from a plantain-roasting coal-pot kept under an empty box in one of the stalls.

Several persons, including Police Sergeant Gabriel Mene, were injured during the fight against the conflagration.

Madam Lady Ogorode of 18, Erejuwa Road, Warri - one of the victims of the fire disaster - told POST in tears that more than £7,000 worth of goods, including 195 currency notes and l20 cash, were destroyed in her own store. The police described her store as one of the largest in the market.

Dr. B.A. Okpaku, the Specialist in-charge of the Warri General Hospital, was working around the clock yesterday with a team of nurses to save the lives of those injured.

Throughout yesterday employees of the Warri Urban District council were working hard to clear the debris.
Because of the extent of the damage, reconstruction work in the market is not expected to be completed before three months’ time.”

Fireman Dave Writes Home To His Mom

by David Pritchett

Fireman Dave with Vice-Principal and Senior Tutor of Provincial Teacher Training College, Warri, Mr. A. L. Agbonobi.

Fireman Dave Writes Home To His Mom Dear Mom and Gram, February 2, 1965 The enclosed clipping, while mostly fabrication, has an interesting story behind it that we got involved in last Friday night. Per usual for a Friday night, we were sitting at the bar in the club down-ing a "bit 'o ale". Whit, Phil, Dick and a new volunteer, Fred and Carl and Lydia and an oil company worker by the name of Ed and I were sitting in a corner of the almost deserted club making palaver. About eleven, Carl, who hadn't been feeling too well for a couple days asked me to take him home. We hopped on the Honda and headed up the Warri-Sapele Road on the way to his house. When we reached the main market we were greeted by a crowd of excited Nigerians all pointing toward the center of the market which was ablaze. They shouted for us to summon aid. We turned the motorcycle around in the middle of the street and headed for the police barracks (police also double as the fire brigade) amid cheers (not unlike the cheers that go up in the cinema when the hero takes off on a fateful chase). We discovered that a bicyclist had already started for the barracks so we went back to the club to collect our crew and join the action.

By the time we got back up to the market, the crowd had tripled and was near a panic. The market, I might explain, is a shambling collection of stalls about ten or so feet deep and about five feet across made of bamboo, sticks and mats. Whit, the organizer of the group, thought maybe we should try to organize some of the Nigerians to get goods out of the path of the fire. We threw that idea out immediately on seeing what was going on. The main entrance to the market was littered with piles of clothing that was being dragged, pushed and carried pell mell by shouting men and boys. We joined in lifting huge wooden boxes of goods and strong arming them across the street out of the entrance. I have seen panic for my second time out here and it sure isn't very pretty. Women were shouting and moaning, I saw one man (could have been more, but at the time I was too involved in what we were doing) screaming like a woman and beating his chest and head. He had probably lost all the meagre stock in trade he had and was ruined. I looked up once just in time to catch a huge box of goods which was being pushed by some over-zealous Nigerians from knocking me down.

In the dark everything took on a sort of Dantesque madness and distortion. People were tearing down stalls In an effort to prevent the spread of the fire and we found ourselves stumbling in the semi-darkness over tables and broken chairs, and ripped bam bam (euphemism for corrugated metal sheeting) and occasionally stepping into the slime of the open drains which crisscross the market.

After helping move things for a short time we (of course) decided to see what we could do to fight the fire. People were running up with buckets which the tossed on metal walls with the fire burning behind it. There was no organization, no fire fighting equipment, no shovels, and not enough, buckets.....in short, chaos. The police had arrived by this time and looked ludicrous in their cast off British army helmets. Ed and I grabbed two long poles and started battering down burning walls and getting water (when the occasional bucket did get to the fire) on the burning stalls. Two catholic priests from the local school and cathedral were there in white shorts and shirts ripping down bamboo walls to get possible fuel away from the fire. Nigerians were throwing tables and chairs away from the fire and we stepped back just in time to avoid being hit with a flying table. Yours truly burned his pinky ever so slightly on a hot table and got cut very slightly when some nut threw a chair. We shouted and insulted and cajoled the people to help us. Most of them were merely standing commenting "Oh, God...Oh, God" as if it was the end of the world. A couple of times we even hollered at the cops, who meekly did what we said. Finally we got the roofs of the stalls to collapse and got the fire under control. The pile of ashes and smoldering junk was no longer than about thirty feet long by about twenty feet wide. If you will note the article, it makes the whole thing sound like an earth shaking conflagration. The damn market was back in business the next day, with the exception of the burned out area.

As far as I know, there were no serious injuries except due to carelessness. There were no police lines set up to keep people back, so a couple of time we slugged people with our poles who were standing looking over our shoulders with curious, passive inaction. I doubt personally that the damage amounted to more than a few thousand pounds. Most of the damage was done by the hysterics of the people tearing and ripping down stalls and running with goods and looters, I was shaking with fatigue when we left the fire and my hands were shaking while I lit a cigarette. We were all smoky and dirty and streaked with sweat. We went out and had another beer when the whole mess was over. We are kind of minor heroes now and it all seems a little ridiculous. Anyway, that's the story.

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A Savvy Ho
Ho Baron (18) 66-67 writes about himself and his life's journey

Ho Baron didn't join the Peace Corps in '65 to avoid Vietnam, because in fact he was mostly unaware of the war. He'd grown up simple in a naïve El Paso, Texas, where the local Hispanics joined the military patriotically and later war protests consisted of little more than a few streakers running through his small college campus. He had a master's in literature and knew little about politics then, yet the "third world" of Mexico was literally in his back yard, and being overseas in the Peace Corps seemed an extension of Ho's upbringing.

Ho caroused with his buddies in Mexico just about every weekend from the time he was 14 until he hit Africa. The dirt streets of Benin were in a way like walking the dirt streets of Juarez. No culture shock on Ho's part there! Growing up with the brown faces of Mexico, he never felt a difference with the Mexican. Likewise in Nigeria, he was at home with the black African. The political awareness he lacked in El Paso hit him hard in Africa. He stumbled through two coups and the Biafra war in Nigeria.

There was a memorable incident with another volunteer that jump-started Ho's thinking. The students in his high school in Sabongidda-Ora asked for a discussion of Vietnam. In prep, Ho boned up on his Time/Newsweek version of the war. Meanwhile John Dashman, a New York "rural development" volunteer working a few miles away, asked if he could sit in on Ho's lecture. Hearing Ho spill his "Domino Theory" to the class, in all due respect to Ho, Dashman proposed a contrary theory…the America as invader theory. The Peace Corps, the likes of John, and the chaos of Nigeria certainly turned Ho around!

After he was evacuated from the Biafra War, the Peace Corps gave Ho the option of terminating with them or transferring to another country. Well aware of Vietnam by then and still draftable, he transferred to teach English in a rural Ethiopian agricultural college, where he witnessed the world's worst poverty. Later, farming in Israel, Ho was mortar-shelled on the Jordanian border. He worked for a agency welfare in East New York, where his beat was in frightening, bombed-out-like neighborhoods. He exited out of the city to Woodstock to write the great unpublished American novel. The "great festival" was coming and everyone was saying that it was going to ruin the place, so our wanderer fled to the Virgin Islands, where the students were having race riots. Of the wrong race, Ho quit the job as a night clerk in aq hotel and worked his way off the island. It was back to New York into a Brooklyn commune where Ho worked for a high school foreign exchange organisation and in evenings played with photography and pen and ink drawing. That's when he officially left "Howard" to become "Ho," yet another of our hero's turning points.

Wandering Europe, Ho settled on and off for four years with a crowd of Belgian cartoonists, then it was off to Austin for a second master's, this time in library science. He did a PR stint for rural county libraries in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, ran a little suburban library in Philly, then in 1980, Ho returned full circle to El Paso to work a while in the family pawn shop four blocks from the Mexico border.

Ho's 64 now, working morning's at the local community college reference library. His photography and pen and ink drawings over the years grew into a passion for making odd surreal sculptures he calls "Gods for Future Religions." His booty consists of more than 200 strange forms that spill from his studio, many available for viewing at 'www.hobaron.com.'

That naïve El Paso kid named Ho is today a news junkie with eyes wide open, and he stays leery of the Time/Newsweek take on the world. It was the time in the Peace Corps, in troubled Nigeria, with Dashman, in Israel, New York, Philly, trips to India, Peru and elsewhere, the pawn shop, all those libraries, all those little and big steps around the world that made Ho a bit more worldly…not just third-worldly but first-worldly, too, and politically savvy. He still thinks he's a bit naïve, but that's the dreamer in him, the kid. He thinks of himself as a free thinker. It's all taught him to read between the lines and draw his own lines, not just in pen and ink nor in the surreal imagery of his sculptural play, but from the facts that are twisted by the twisted of our world.

I’m back safely in Boulder, reunited with Chris, after working my ass off for a month in a bush hospital in Southwest Uganda.

I have never worked so hard in my life,nor felt so overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery, AIDS, and yes, almost daily deaths among the Ugandan patients I treated, both adults and kids. I saw more seriously ill patients in a month at this hospital than I have seen in my previous life-time. No exaggeration! The experience was at the same time, both amazing and tragic.

I worked at the 200-bed Church of Uganda Kisiizi Hospital with 6 Ugandan docs who are some of the smartest, most competent physicians I have ever known, especially regarding tropical medicine. Three of them, Ivan, Gabriel and Tonny, have become close friends and we plan an on-going partnership and relationship.

I came to the conclusion that although HIV/AIDS might be the glamorous, in-the-media, attention-getting disease du jour in Africa, it is malaria that is far and away the biggest killer and the greatest on-going threat to Ugandans. Malaria may be considered a chronic disease by some, but it is killing people right and left and leaving thousands, mainly children,neurologically crippled every year.

As of right now, I plan to focus my future efforts on helping the docs and staff at Kisiizi Hospital more effectively deal with this unrelenting problem of malaria (as well as TB). If you have contacts in the area of malaria research, funding and control, please let me know.

I felt personally humbled and shaken when, early on in my time there, an otherwise previously healthy young man my younger daughter’s age (who looked like a college football player) died from cerebral malaria and kidney failure (blackwater fever) even as I personally did CPR on him. What if that had been my own child? And such deaths were a common occurrence. I lost several young people this way to cerebral malaria.

As a result of this incredible roller coaster experience, I intend to redouble my efforts to reach out to the land where I first served in the Peace Corps, and I want to thank all of you who are already doing so much in your day-to-day lives to aid the disadvantaged of the world, either directly or indirectly.
I hope this does not come across as moralizing, yet I am reminded of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement/question: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”

I didn’t get AIDS, but I would not be surprised if I test positive for tuberculosis. So many patients,with whom I was in very close contact as I made daily rounds on the medical, pediatric and isolation wards, had non-stop, juicy, hacking coughs.

What is the moral of this story for the NPCA? You will need to decide for yourselves.

For me, if it had not been for my Peace Corps experience many years ago, I might not have gone to Uganda, and I might continue to be seduced by my comfortable Boulder life style, oblivious to the great suffering that is so prevalent in way too many places in the world. As Rudolf Virchow said over 150 years ago, ‘It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation.’

If the NPCA does nothing else, in my opinion, it must continue to be a watchdog and an advocate for the Peace Corps and an expanded international aid budget in Congress and with each administration. And it must continue to link RPCVs, staff and friends with each other, because out of that linkage, dialogue and cross fertilization, RPCVs are inspired and encouraged to continue to remember and work for the poorest of the poor.

Hibbard (01) 61–63, broke off his medical training to join the Peace Corps and taught high school science in Ikenne via Shagamu, Nigeria. On completing his medical training he went to India from 1967 to 1969 as a Peace Corps physician.
Hibbard now lives with his wife of 25 years, Chris, in Boulder, CO where he is a full-time family physician and a hospice medical director. Chris is a psychotherapist and a partner in various political and health care organizations.
In his free time, among other things, Hibbard is organizing an RPCV group in Boulder.
They have three children who have all graduated from college.

First of all I would like to thank Friends of Nigeria for their generous gifts to VSO.

I can’t believe I’m already more than a year in Nigeria. The serving volunteers tell you when you come in-country that time will fly and it really does.

In my first year I think I have achieved some things. Together with my counterpart we improved the system of micro teaching. Micro teaching is a practical where students give a very short lesson to show a chosen skill. Only it was done in the College with peers. We changed the system for Primary School students so they will give in pairs a full lesson to children. There is a lot involved but it seems to work.

Another improvement (to my eyes anyway) is in the Model Primary school which is attached to the College. They had the system of subject teachers and in this session we started with classroom teachers. That is a big change and as usual people are not too happy with big changes but they are trying.

The programme that was started by my predecessor runs fine. This year I’m training a co-ordinator and I’m convinced he can do the job next year on his own.

I’m sure I have been changed too but that is hard to see in yourself. My friends at home say I sound the same but I’m not sure that is a good indicator.
I know I have more patience. I can wait for a taxi to fill up for more than an hour without getting anxious any more. When it gets up to 2 hours I still lose my patience. Maybe another year will solve that!

At the moment I have to decide if I will finish in August ’06 or extend. I have not decided yet because I find the decision hard. I would like to be in Nigeria a little longer but only when it’s really useful. Obviously there is always use for a volunteer but the question is will I be the one or can someone else do the job (maybe better) or is the College able to run the programmes on its own? Next time I will be able to tell you more about this.

A reference to Kirikiri maximum security prison in a FON Newsletter some months ago revived a memory of my visit there in June 1968. I wondered if any other PC Volunteers had ever entered the place. My memorable visit to Kirikiri is related to how my PC assignment led to a career in criminal justice education. In the summer of 1967 my wife Greta and I (Amy was not yet born, see FON vol. 7, no.1, Fall 2002) arrived at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria after a non-productive six months at the University of Ife law faculty. Dean Mackinnon informed us that four courses remained to be taught, between us, in the Fall. Greta selected evidence and business law, leaving me with courses in criminal law and in criminal procedure.

In 1968 a former colleague at Ife who had transferred to the Lagos Law School organized a national prison conference in Lagos. Given my growing interest in criminal justice, I attended. The 25 participants included judges and magistrates, law faculty, sociologists and other academicians. The conference chair Taslim O. Elias, one of Nigeria’s greatest men, deserves special mention. In 1968 he was simultaneously national attorney general and dean of Lagos Law School. A prolific scholar, he later served as chief justice of the Nigerian Supreme Court, and as a judge on the International Court of Justice at The Hague. He also served as external examiner in my courses and others at Ahmadu Bello University. At the end of each academic year, he flew north to Zaria to reread and add his grade to students’ final exams that I had graded. His brilliance and warm spirit stay with me today.

The high points of the prison conference were visits to the Lagos jail, a desultory place downtown, and Kirikiri prison, two miles west of Apapa on the mainland. Kirikiri was modeled after an English prison, with high brick walls, guard towers, and three-tiered cellblocks with concrete individual cells, and bars for the wall at the end of each cell. We had a lunch with the warders (guards) who professed high standards of care and a concern for rehabilitation. There was much about the place that supported their claims. Prisoners seemed well fed and moved about the open, spacious grounds without undue restraint. We saw several learning barbering and other trades. In the evening a group of prisoner-thespians put on a hilarious performance of a farce called The Corrupt Judge in a large auditorium. The audience was sprinkled with warders’ wives and I recall one in the row in front of me saying, through her tears of laughter, that there was a lot of truth in the plot. I was astonished at the ability of prisoners to perform on a controversial topic, to say nothing of the inclusion of warders’ wives in the audience.

Two grimmer incidents, however, make this tale worth retelling. The members of the prison conference were ushered into the execution chamber, a large bare room with heavy wooden floors and an ugly metal hook hanging from the ceiling. Below the hook was a square trap door. The only break in the floor was a long handle sticking up, apparently attached to a spring release below the trap door. The guard pulled the lever and the two halves of the trap door flipped open in a split-second, banging into the underside of the wooden floor with a tremendous noise. The reverberating echoes bounced around the room long enough to cover the drop of a man attached to a noose hanging from the hook. As we were led out, we passed the cells of death row.
A scene from the Lagos jail was repeated. When the prisoners understood that important people were passing by, they began to call out petitions to be heard. Taslim Elias stopped the entourage and listened to them. They complained that they had been on death row for years. Elias was taken aback. He said that as attorney general he had to approve of every execution and had not received even one execution request from the civil authorities. He assured the prisoners that he would look into it. Given the inefficiencies of Nigerian affairs, I had to wonder if the prisoners would have been better off if our group had never passed that way.

The other incident was more indicative of then current events. We were heading toward a visit of one cell block when a senior officer blocked our path. He shouted out that prisoners in that cell block were “too rowdy” to allow a group of middle aged and middle class men and women to pass through safely. As it was, they had been soldiers arrested for a variety of crimes while prosecuting the civil war against the Biafrans.

We were led to an adjacent cell block and entered single file. I was among the first five visitors. Prisoners stood at the open doors of their cells as we passed through. At about the fourth cell, a prisoner caught my attention. Unlike the younger prisoners, this man was in his 40s or 50s. Like a paterfamilias in his own home he had a wrap about his midriff, was bare-chested, and had a tubby physique. I broke ranks and quietly greeted him. His polite “hello” conveyed the voice of a well-educated man, not a laborer. I took a step into his cell and looked down at the rickety table. It held two books, R.M. Jackson’s Machinery of Justice in England and Locke’s Two Treatises—hardly escape reading. Stunned, I weakly asked what he was doing there. My memory, which might be embellishing at this point, is that he sucked in his belly and said, “Sir, you see before you a victim of unfortunate circumstances.” As I stood speechless, one of the magistrates in our group let out a shriek, rushed into the cell, and embraced the prisoner as if a long-lost brother. The tour, of course, stopped at this point as the entire entourage gathered around. The prisoner had been a high-ranking civilian official in the military government of the Midwestern State, which had broken away and thrown its fortunes in with the Biafrans. He was captured when federal troops took Benin City. He complained that he was being held without a trial. On the way home, I turned this amazing episode over in my mind. The political prisoner’s due process rights were clearly violated. Yet, here was a man not secreted in barracks, subject to torture or summarily executed. One thing all volunteers learn in Nigeria is that not every problem in life has an easy answer.

It’s been nearly twelve years since my departure from Nigeria. Yet, as each us in the PCV Friends of Nigeria community can relate, a part of Nigeria’s essence became woven into our personal identities, forever changing us in many ways. I grew to love the people, not difficult to do with how hospitable and kind they were. The children were especially dear to me. After the initial training, the children were the ones who were my language tutors. My counterpart served as my “dad” while there, watching out for me and teaching me further about the culture. I hold many dear memories from those two beautiful years, October ’91 to December ’93, in central Nigeria.

My memories are not marred by the fact that in Spring ’93 I contracted HIV. You may recall the protocol for medical examinations; prior to admission, midway in service, and at the conclusion of service. It was at the conclusion of my service that I learned of my HIV status.

Though the HIV in my body quickly progressed to AIDS by Fall ‘96, I am alive and well due to medications, access to healthcare and nutrition, my employment, my housing, my friends and support, my positive spirit which I know is possible not only because I innately optimistic, but because I have all the aforementioned privileges and comforts.

In Nigeria alone, there are 3,300,000 adults living with HIV/AIDS. An additional 290,000 children are infected. Over 23 million adults are living, more likely suffering, with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. These and additional worldwide statistics can be found at www.avert.org .

I love Nigeria, its people, the culture. My endearment extends to all of Mother Africa. I was fortunate to travel through Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger when I was a PCV on vacation. Since my Peace Corps days, I have returned once to West Africa, specifically Ghana, for the funeral of my sons’ paternal grandmother.

Through the years I allowed my connection to Nigeria to wane to our Friends of Nigeria newsletter, attending local Nigerian events and having a dear Nigerian friend here in the greater Seattle area. I was not diligent in maintaining contact with dear ones from my sweet days as a PCV. Yet, contact or no contact, when you truly love someone, you never really part do you?

I have a dream called “Alive with AIDS.” I want to share my personal story and instill a desire to help those living with and affected by AIDS in developing countries, beginning with my beloved Nigeria. I dream of importing practical items that could be marketed here and beyond via boutiques or the Web, with all profits returning to Nigeria or other countries of origin (my dream goes beyond Nigeria, but one step at a time). If you would like to learn more about “Alive with AIDS,” please visit www.alivewithaids.com. My wish in sharing my dream with the Friends of Nigeria community is that others will choose to partner with me, develop a team, and bring this dream to life.

If you would like to contact me, I can be reached at jeannine@alivewithaids.com.

During the Christmas holiday break in 1963, six PCVs—John Bishop, Steve Clapp, Lowell Fewster, Harvey Flad, Roger Leed and Bud West—journeyed with two schoolboys and a cook/translator to the Mambila Plateau, a remote region of northeastern Nigeria then accessible only on foot. This snapshot from their adventure is based on Steve’s photos and letters home.

We started up a dirt trail packed smooth by generations of feet. Rich or poor, old or young, this is at present the only way to reach the Mambila Plateau. Bobboi, one of our schoolboys, related that his grandfather had paid three pounds to be carried up the escarpment when he was too old to walk.
We raced against the sun, hoping to reach the top before late morning so that the heat of midday would be nullified by the 6,000-foot altitude. I found the climb grueling—we had to climb 4,500 feet in a few miles of walking. There were no really rocky stretches, but the constant upward course of the trail made it an exhausting hike. There were almost no level or downhill stretches to give us relief.

The final bit of torture is a hill called Biyu da sisi (two and sixpence). From the bottom one sees the trail laid out like a snake twisting in switchbacks to the summit. It got its name from a carrier who is said to have seen the hill, dropped his head-load, and refused to budge until his employer paid him an extra 2/6 for the climb.

The first of us to arrive at the top found ourselves among a party of horseboys and retainers waiting to greet the district head of Mambila, whose party had been scheduled to climb the hill that day and receive horses at the summit.

Mazu, our cook/translator, encouraged us to try cocoyams that some Fulani women were selling. We did, and they tasted like cold mashed potatoes. We 1ay down on the hillside and enjoyed the sun and the cool breeze and watched walkers and trains of donkeys pass us on their way up and down the escarpment.

When four of us had reached the top, Bud and John pushed on to Mai Samari, our destination, while Harvey and I stayed behind to wait for Lowell and Roger. They toiled up to the summit about an hour and a half later. Lowell ate a cocoa yam and an overripe tomato and promptly threw up.

“Acquai wahalla,” said the Nigerians (“There is suffering”). This was to prove a key incident on the trip; all of Mambila was to learn how the six Batures (Europeans) had suffered coming up Biyu da sisi. “You have suffered,” people declared in distant towns upon meeting us or, perhaps, “You have tried very hard.” Offering us six of his horses for the remainder of our trip, the district head spoke of the climb and assured us that, in the future, we would not suffer. “Wahalla” was our watchword.

The walk to Mai Samari was six miles over vast meadows of ankle-high grass turned golden by the early dry season. On the horizon one saw the grass yurts of nomadic Cow Fulanis, and here and there one of Mambila’s many cattle herds inching its way down some distant slope.

On the trail we met one of two Mambila students at our school in Yola, the son of a chief who was making his way “downstairs” in order to take an examination in Zaria. Hills appeared and were mastered, and we finally found ourselves facing an oasis of huts and luxuriant shade trees set among hills and ridges and bordered by a small stream. This was Mai Samari, the first of three major towns we were to visit.

We were put up in a forestry department storeroom that, with its stone walls and barred windows, more resembled a jail cell than a home. We had been so slow arriving that nearly all the carriers had come before us despite their 45-pound loads. "

This was to be the last day of such embarrassment, however. Our schoolboys found out that the district head was to arrive the following day, Christmas Day, and another top official the day after that. We would do well to wait and ask to travel with their party; it was our best chance of obtaining horses and traveling in comfort.

We agreed and settled in for a three-day stay in the town. We had some hot soup and crackers, read or played cards, and waited for Mazu to prepare the evening meal. I found a place to wash in the town stream; the others came later. It had been an exhausting day.

As we were eating dinner by lantern light, Jonathan, a Christian student in our party, came back with the news that the local Christians, members of the Cameroonian Baptist Association, were holding a Christmas Eve service at eight that night. Did we want to go? We said we did and dressed as neatly as we could for the occasion.

We were led over the stream across a log bridge and up a trail onto a hill that commanded a view of the town. There the Christians had built a small square building of mud bricks with a thatched roof. As we approached, we could see and hear them dancing in the moonlight outside the building. There was one lantern outside the church and another one inside near the back serving as an altarpiece.

Greetings were exchanged and the dancing continued. A couple of us ventured inside the church to inspect it, and this precipitated a movement of all the Christians inside. There were log pews — the women and children sat on the left and the men on the right — and we arranged ourselves as best we could on the back pew and the one in front of it.

The preacher, a wiry old Kaka tribesman with filed teeth and a jaunty manner, greeted us as brothers. “Look at these people,” he told his flock. “Today they climbed Biyu da sisi. They have suffered. But here they are in church tonight. Would you do that?”

He spoke in the pidgin English of the West Cameroon, where he was trained and presumably born. There is a remarkable amount of pidgin spoken in these remote hills. Rumor has it that the Germans began its use as a lingua franca when they owned the colony, and the British continued speaking pidgin after 1918. One even finds pidgin Bibles, although they are increasingly prized by collectors and therefore difficult to obtain.

The service continued with impromptu hymn-singing. It was more than just singing, for each member of the congregation had a drum or makeshift musical instrument for accompaniment. There were long pieces of wood carved with notches to give a washboard effect when scraped with a metal ring. One or two men blew on cattle horns. Children had rattles made from old Ovaltine cans.

A whispered message reached us at the back of the room: would the Europeans sing some of their own Christmas songs? After some discussion, we settled on “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “O, Come All Ye Faithful” and—for its rhythm— “Deck the Halls.”

We sounded strange to ourselves singing in that dark little room, and I can only guess how we sounded to the Africans. There was another hymn by the Africans, and then silence for a sermon by the pastor, the retelling of the Christmas story.

“How come this Christmas?” the preacher asked. “This Christmas no be just for dancing—how come this Christmas?” His phrases were translated from pidgin into Fulfulde, the Fulani language, which is the lingua franca of most of Sardauna and Adamawa provinces.

He went on to tell the story of the nativity, conjuring up African images of the “couriers” (wise men) and “men for bush” (shepherds) whom the angels “makum big fear.” The virgin birth had to be explained: “How Mary makum pickin with no concession? How she be no bad woman makum pickin no marry?” I wish I could remember it all.

Another message reached us at the back of the room—would we give them a talk? Lowell, who had completed a year of divinity school before joining the Peace Corps, was chosen for this honor, which he performed by telling them how much we enjoyed celebrating the holiday even though many miles from our own homes.

We stayed for one more hymn and then departed, leaving the worshippers to dance in celebration until dawn.

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Ho in 2004	Crypt Chest 19x38x17" bronze 1999	Cast stone mandala relief 1996 28x28x5"